Tom Petty, Red Hot Chili Peppers lead Firefly Music Festival

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Rock and Roll Hall of Famers Tom Petty and the Heartbreakers and the Red Hot Chili Peppers will headline a pair of nights at Dover's three-day Firefly Music Festival this summer with indie rockers Vampire Weekend and Foster the People teaming up to co-headline another.

The beefed-up, second-year festival will also boast pioneering hip hop act Public Enemy, a 2013 Rock and Roll Hall of Fame inductee, whose Chuck D helped close out the Grammy Awards with a performance earlier this month.

Fellow 2013 Grammy performers The Lumineers and last weekend's "Saturday Night Live" musical guests Alabama Shakes are also on the Firefly bill. They will be alongside bluegrass-tinged folkies The Avett Brothers, psychedelic rockers MGMT, upstart Compton, Calif., rapper Kendrick Lamar and Scottish DJ Calvin Harris, who was featured on Rihanna's hit, "We Found Love."

The festival begins on the first day of summer, June 21, and wraps up on Sunday, June 23 - a full month earlier than the festival's inaugural outing, which pitted it against the Delaware State Fair in Harrington and WXPN's XPoNential Music Festival in Camden, N.J.

In addition to more acts - there are a total of 70 currently announced - the performances across the four main stages will continue later than last year's 11 p.m. music curfew. Headliners will perform until midnight and a pair of late night acts on Friday and Saturday will continue until 1 a.m., says Firefly Music Festival Director Greg Bostrom.

A fifth stage in the camping area, now named The Grove following an online fan vote, will have live music during the day and night. Food trucks and farmer's markets have also been added, Bostrom says. Other activities like water slides or volleyball courts are being considered in the camping area as well.

"We started off with a pretty cool eclectic line-up last year, sort of centered on indie rock and we wanted to grow that this year," says Bostrom, who works for Chicago-based Red Frog Events, the festival's founder. "We had a goal of bringing in some household names this year - names that no matter who you told, they would know a few people in the line-up. We're so thrilled."

Wilmington-based pop/rock five-piece The Spinto Band is the lone Delaware band on this year's roster, up from the 48 that performed last year at The Woodlands near Dover International Speedway, including inaugural headliners Jack White, The Black Keys and The Killers.

A pair of rock bands with deep Philadelphia roots that have performed in recent years at the University of Delaware - Dr. Dog and The Walkmen - will also make their Firefly debut. Other stand-outs include indie rock's Grizzly Bear, Passion Pit, Matt and Kim and Yeah Yeah Yeahs, along with electronic breakout Toro y Moi.

Early bird, three-day general admission passes ($198) and VIP passes ($798) for the festival, which drew about 30,000 people last year, go on sale Thursday at noon at www.fireflyfestival.com. Once the early bird passes sell out, the price will bump up to $218. (Last year, the early bird three-day passes were $178 and VIP passes were $595.)

Like last year, single-day passes will available closer to festival weekend, "pending availability," according to organizers. Camping and luxury "glamping" passes also go on sale Thursday afternoon. New camping spots located within The Woodlands near the Hammock Hideout where music fans lounged on shaded hammocks will also be available.

Performing at large scale festivals is not new for Delaware's own Spinto Band. They will perform at the Caprices Festival in Switzerland next month headlined by The Killers and have previously played massive fests overseas like England's Reading Festival and Japan's Fuji Rock Festival. It's fitting that Firefly will be the band's biggest American rock festival to date.

Above: Vampire Weekend and Foster the People will team up as co-headliners on one of Firefly Music Festival's three nights this June.

"It'll be convenient just to drive south a little and play this gigantic festival," says Spinto guitarist/singer Thomas Hughes. "Plus, it's another way for Delaware to make a name for itself nationally."

The Spinto Band won't be the only Delaware flavor at this year's festival. Milton-based Dogfish Head Brewery will once again be the official craft brew sponsor with an even bigger beer tent on the grounds. Its specialty brew, Firefly Ale, will return, along with a few new beers that were not there in 2012.

The Firefly beer will also be available at a limited number of music venues and music-centric bars along the East Coast in the run-up to the festival, including Washington D.C.'s 9:30 Club, and Delaware's Two Stones Pub, Pickled Pig Pub and Dogfish head brew pub, among others.

Also, the Delaware Sports League, a Wilmington-based recreational sports league that hosts co-ed events across the state, is in talks to be involved once again. The league organized a game area on the Firefly grounds near the festival's arcade last year, allowing festival-goers to play free games of cornhole between musical acts.

Only one act from last year's Firefly Music Festival will return this summer: Las Vegas rockers Imagine Dragons. The band's debut album "Night Visions" was released two months after its Firefly performance and the catchy lead single, "It's Time,' snagged a MTV Video Music Awards nomination for Best Rock Video.

Indie rock band Passion Pit, which canceled last year's Firefly appearance due to frontman Michael Angelakos' treatment for bipolar disorder, is once again slated to appear, making up for the last minute cancellation.